Forget pizza delivery, drones mapping high-altitude glaciers now

San Francisco: About five km high in the Peruvian Andes, drones are helping scientists map glaciers and wetlands with 10-cm precision and gauge how climate change will affect the people who rely on those glaciers for water supply.

The strategy provides a ground for research teams that are investigating water security in other areas of the world with much larger populations, including India and China.

In the Cordillera Blanca mountain area, glacier melt provides up to 50 percent of the water during the dry season and people use it for farms, hydroelectricity and to drink.

One early finding is that the Cordillera Blanca has a healthy groundwater system.

“We know the glaciers are disappearing, so there will be less water available for the dry season in the future. But what my colleagues and I have found is that the groundwater system is storing some of the glacier melt as well as precipitation,” said Oliver Wigmore, doctoral student in geography at the Ohio State University.

“There will still be a significant drop in water supply eventually, but there may be some potential for the groundwater to buffer it,” he added.

With the help from data gathered by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Wigmore also recorded measurements that suggest a key glacier in the region’s Llaca Valley is changing rapidly.

“UAVs offer some of the best technology available today for gathering data on a scale to inform local water management decisions,” Wigmore said.

The drone technology overcomes clouds, rough terrain and thin air that prevent easy access to ice on the Cordillera Blanca.

In the Cordillera Blanca, clouds block satellite views for all but a few weeks a year, and the terrain is too irregular to take reliable ice surface measurements by hand.